Are you reading Homeric Greek or studying Homeric Greek with Pharr's Homeric Greek - A Book For Beginners? Here's where you can meet other Homeric Greek learners. Use this board for all things Homeric Greek.

Has anyone used Raymond Schoder's A Reading Course in Homeric Greek? I will be studying Homer soon (I'd thought I would start next fall but decided not to wait that long) and would like to supplement Pharr with another Homeric text.

I have copies of all three 3 volumes but have only studied the first 10 lessons or so. I think it is an excellent text but currently am studying Pharr (because there is an online group). I will probably start using Schoder as a supplement to this before long.

Schoder's course, based on Odyssey 1, is excellent in my opinion, particularly as there are many exercises and there are keys to these in the teachers handbook (volume 3). The first book provides most of the grammar and begins reading the Odyssey while the second book mostly continues the reading with an excellent commentary and notes. Unlike Pharr, Schoder takes more lessons to actually begin on the Homeric text (from memory about 35 lessons- sorry don't have it in front of me now).

If you don't already have the books:
The problem with Schoder is that, while many people seem to recommend this course, it has long been out of print ( and there don't appear to be any plans to reprint it ). When I was seeking this out, I found that it was relatively easy to obtain Book 2 and the Teacher's handbook second hand, but book 1 appears to be very scarce. Of course, it is vital to have Book 1 if the others are to be any use.

I was lucky, after searching for about 12 months, I finally found someone in Alaska who had the books for sale as a package.

I don't have any of the three books. The books indeed are very difficult to find; I would not risk buying one on the presimption that the other two volumes will become available later -- either buy the 3 volume set as a package or don't buy at all.

It would be nice to have a supplemental text in addition to Pharr. I am even willing to put up with the Jesuitical moralizing of the authors (they were men ot the cloth) if it would help me achieve Homeric fluency.

As a matter of fact, I did put up with the Jesuit moralizing, when I was in high school, used the first edition of Schoder and Horrigan, and had plenty of real live Jesuits around. I had great fun while it lasted, and combined Latin/Greek was my favorite course. I only got up through the first half of Book 1 when I quit school, just after starting real Homer.

What I like about the series is:

lessons are well paced, one per day

the book uses the Odyssey rather than the Iliad, a more interesting story, I think

there's plenty more practice the Pharr

there are two years high school (presumably one year college) course work, i.e., more exposure to Homer

I really do wish there were more beginners texts in Homeric Greek, but that's not the way most people learn it. And, by the way, after learning Homeric Greek, it's easy to work through a beginning Attic text and start on another author.

Just wanted to add that there is another book called "Learning Greek with Homer" by Frank Beetham. It introduces greek grammar through reading Odyssey one. It has a similar approach to Pharr, but in my view, is not as good.

You probably know of these, but in case you don't:

- Benner's Selections from the Iliad is quite good. It is essentially an abridged version of the entire Iliad, with a commentary at the back. Where some chapters or passages have been left out, there is connecting description of events in English.

- WB Stanford's commentary on the Odyssey (2 vols) and M. Wilcock's commentary on the Iliad (2 vols) are worth acquiring. These have the entire text of each epic, but (unlike the Loebs) have a detailed commentary and explanation of grammatical difficulties. I have bought these to study after I have worked through Pharr.

Just wanted to add that there is another book called "Learning Greek with Homer" by Frank Beetham.

Ugh... now I have to see what this book is like as well as Schoders' books...

Just visited amazon and here's a quote:

This course for absolute beginners commences with the Greek alphabet and explains fully each new word and grammatical point, guiding even an initially Greekless reader to translate a key book of the 'Odyssey' (Book V; the beginning of Odysseus' journey home from Calypso's isle)